Single white female

26

IN the Atherton Hotel's long, narrow lobby were a white sofa and chair in front of a large mirror and an arrangement of potted plants. Beyond them, the desk and the entrance to the adjoining coffee shop were on the left, the elevators on the right. A middle-aged Hispanic woman sat low and almost unnoticeable at the switchboard, idly plucking at a hangnail. Behind the long marble-topped desk, a tall gray-haired man was busy registering a young couple whose only luggage seemed to be the overstuffed backpacks lying at their feet in a tangle of canvas strapping, like parachutes in case of fire.

One of the elevators was at lobby level. Its doors slid open immediately when Allie punched the Up button. She stepped in and pressed the button for the tenth floor.

On Five, the elevator stopped and an overweight blond bellhop got in and smiled at Allie. He was carrying a clipboard under his arm and had a yellow pencil wedged behind his right ear. At Seven, he got off the elevator, and Allie was alone when it arrived at Ten.

She walked down the narrow, dimly lighted hall toward Sam's room. The carpet soaked up the sound of her steps. A TV was playing too loud in one of the rooms; the inane chatter of a game show seeped through the door as Allie passed, then was left behind in an outbreak of enthusiastic but diminishing applause. Somebody had won big. The humidity outside had inundated the hotel; the hall was cool and had a mildewed smell about it. The air was almost thick enough to feel.

The next room was 1027, Sam's room. Allie stood for a moment close to the white-enameled door. No sound came from inside. She knocked. No answer. Nothing.

She turned the knob and found the door was unlocked. In fact, it hadn't been closed quite all the way. Wasn't even latched.

Maybe Sam hadn't pulled it tight when he'd left to go out. He could be careless that way. Or maybe he was in the shower. Or sleeping so deeply her knocking hadn't awakened him. She prayed it was something like that, that the reason he hadn't come to the door was something innocent and explainable.

She swallowed, pushed the heavy door open, and stepped inside.

The smell that struck her was familiar, yet she couldn't quite place it. The lights were out in the room. The only illumination was from the picture rolling soundlessly on the TV near the foot of the bed; a car chase racing vertically as well as horizontally. The TV game show next door was barely audible through the wall. Sam's double bed was unmade, sheets and spread in a wild tangle.

She could see into the suite's adjoining room. It was also dark. The bathroom door was closed, but no crack of light showed beneath it. Allie said, "Sam?"

The only answer was the muted, constant roar of traffic ten stories below, the background rush of noise that was always there and was itself a part of the city's silence and existence. A vital sign of life; steel blood coursing through concrete arteries.

Allie saw something on the floor near the television, at the foot of the bed. The flickering light from the screen had a strobelike effect and she couldn't make out what the object was. She moved forward a few steps. Stopped and gasped.

She wasn't seeing what she thought! It was a trick, a magician's prop! It was a fake! Please!

But as she edged closer she knew she was looking at a hand that had been severed at the wrist.

Shaking uncontrollably, she lurched away and steadied herself on a small desk with a lamp on it. She switched on the lamp, but carefully avoided looking again at the severed hand.

She saw Sam's ankle and his black wing-tip shoe protruding from behind the bed and walked over there, staying near the wall, away from the hand. She tried not to think of the hand, lying there so still like some kind of pale, lifeless sea creature that had somehow worked its way onto land and then died.

She didn't want to look at Sam, either, but she knew she must. She'd come this far and there was no choice.

He was on the floor between the bed and the wall. Lying on his back with his eyes wide open and horrified, his arms bent out of sight beneath his body. His other hand was resting on one of the pillows on the bed, centered as if it were on display in a museum. His jockey shorts and pants were bunched down around his knees. Things had been done to him with a knife.

Something in the room was hissing loudly. Steam escaping under pressure? Then she realized it was her breathing.

Allie backed away, stepped on something soft-the hand on the floor-and whimpered. Leaped to the side and froze like a startled, terrified animal. She stared at the stained sheets and recognized the smell in the room as blood. Bile surged bitterly at the back of her throat, a burning column of acid. Her stomach contorted so that she actually felt it roll against her belt. She retched and ran bent over to the bathroom, flung open the door, and automatically switched on the light. More blood!

On the tiles. The white toilet seat. The white porcelain tank. A smeared red handprint on the curved edge of the bathtub. Allie saw that a trail of blood led from the bathroom toward the bed. Her jogging shoes were stained red.

The stench in the bathroom was overwhelming. She gagged, sank down on her knees before the toilet bowl, and vomited when she saw feces and a pudding of clotted blood in the water. Sam must have been attacked while he was sitting there, during a bowel movement. That was how it appeared, anyway. So violently did she vomit that some of what was already in the porcelain bowl splashed up in her face.

Trembling, moaning, she scrambled to her feet and twisted the faucet handles of the wash basin. She scooped handfuls of cold water over her face, listening to the cool, pure sound of it falling back into the basin. She kept scooping water until, with great effort, she made herself stop. Then she washed her hands thoroughly with the small white bar of hotel soap, though they were unsoiled. She staggered from the bathroom, noticing that the carpet was soggy and gave beneath her soles. Her heart slamming against her ribs, she ran to the door.

She didn't remember dashing down the hall to the elevator. Riding the elevator down to the lobby.

The Hispanic woman at the switchboard stared at her and frowned with black, unplucked brows. She was peering into Allie's eyes as if there were something disturbing behind them that she'd never seen before. The tall gray-haired desk clerk stopped what he was doing with some crinkled yellow forms at the far end of the desk and glided toward her, his features aging with each step and with his growing apprehension. He'd been around a long time and knew trouble when he saw it. He said, "Miss…?"

Allie leaned with both hands on the desk, her head bowed. She gave the desk clerk a from-down-under look and said, "Room Ten twenty-seven. Dead." Didn't sound like her voice. Someone high, floating, imitating her.

The switchboard operator had stood up and was crowding the desk clerk, as if she might want to hide behind him. Didn't seem much taller standing. She said, "What? What'd you say, hon?"

Allie tried to speak again but couldn't. Her throat was constricted. She heard herself croak unintelligibly.

"Somebody dead in Ten twenty-seven?" the desk clerk asked in a distant, amazingly calm voice. As if dead guests were part of hotel-biz; one or two every night. Allie nodded. "You sure?" She could manage only another nod.

He stared at her like a stern, impossible father about to ask an important question, warning her in advance that he wanted the truth but he didn't want to hear anything unpleasant. "You mean he died of a heart attack? Something like that? Right?"

"Murdered," Allie made herself say. "Cut up in pieces." The switchboard operator said, "Madre de Dios!"

The desk clerk straightened up so he was standing as tall as possible and, still with his calm gaze fixed on Allie, called, "Will!"

An elderly black bellhop appeared. The old desk clerk casually reached into a side pocket and tossed him a key. It must have been a pass key. Its metal tag clinked against it as the bellhop caught it with one gnarled hand.

"Run on up to Ten twenty-seven," the desk clerk said. "See what there is to see and then phone down."

The bellhop glanced at Allie. He had sad, very kind eyes. He said, "Got Somethin' all over your shoes." Allie heard herself say, "Huh? Oh, that's blood."

The bellhop's face got hard with fear and a kind of resolve. Or was it resignation? "Seen that before," he said, and walked over and got in the elevator she'd just ridden down. "Seen you before, too," he said as the door slid shut. But he hadn't, she was sure. It took Allie a few seconds to realize what he'd meant. And its significance.

It was Hedra he'd seen. Hedra wearing her Allie wig. Wearing her Allie clothes. Inside Allie's blue coat. Walking her Allie walk. Not Allie! Hedra!

Within a couple of minutes the switchboard buzzed urgently and a tiny red light began blinking. An insistent code: Murder! Murder! Murder!

The Hispanic woman drifted toward it. Her eyes were brown pools of fear. The desk clerk shuffled over to stand by her. He leaned over with his gray hair near her dark hair, as if he wanted to hear firsthand what was being said on the receiver pressed to the woman's ear.

While they were standing facing away from her, Allie fled from the lobby and into the street.